Silverstone GD07 HTPC Chassis Review

I had a mixed time with Silverstones GD07, given the number of fan mounting points I was expecting our Antec water cooler to drop right into this chassis, same goes for our BeQuiet Dark Rock II, but this isn’t something I can hold against Silverstone, for someone who may be purchasing this chassis it’s just a case of buying the right components for the build, unfortunately for me that I didn’t have the appropriate sized CPU cooler.

I am not a fan of the cage mounting system for the drives in the front of the chassis, but I have to admit its a well designed solution to the complex ergonomics issue in such a compact chassis.  The main issue I had with it was reinstalling it in the chassis, only to find that my power supplies cables were blocking its mounting point, a little bit of awkward fighting with the cables and the cage finally resulted in it’s installations, to which everything looked fine once in place, as you can see in the photos on our complete system page, but the tricky design left this build taking around 1.5 hours, 3 x what it normally takes me to complete a system.

But this isn’t a normal PC chassis, once everything was in place, this thing really does look fantastic, it’s front panel keeping everything looking slick and tidy and loads of fan mounting points keeping everything cool in the process.  I especially like that they’ve fitted it out with low RPM fans, making sure that the slick looks aren’t spoilt with noise, one of the major points of a good HTPC is that it should be cool and quiet, so not to disturb any intended movie watching from your system.

So over all then, I really like this chassis, I loved it at first, but then hated it for the build process, then loved it again, which has left me somewhat torn on this final opinion. a few minor issues aside though it’s a really well built chassis, with some clever solutions to difficult space issues on the inside, it all adds up though as I don’t doubt this thing would make a fantastic looking and performing addition to any home cinema setup, which is why I’m awarding the GD07 our Editors Choice Award.